Cliven Bundy to sheriffs: ‘Disarm’ the Bureau of Land Management

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy said Monday that his standoff with the feds isn’t just about cattle: It’s about an “overpowering” bureaucracy in the U.S. that needs to be disarmed.

“I only want to talk to one person in each county across the United States, and here’s what I want to say: County sheriffs, disarm U.S. bureaucracy. County sheriffs, disarm U.S. bureaucrats,” Bundy said on Glenn Beck’s radio show on TheBlaze on Monday.

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Reid: Ranch standoff 'not over'

Beck said he invited Bundy on his show after speaking with him Sunday to try to understand the man whose cattle have ignited a flashpoint between federal regulators and states’ rights advocates over federal land. On Saturday, the Bureau of Land Management released Bundy’s cattle back to him after rounding it up on federal land over what they say are unpaid grazing fees.

The release ended a tense standoff between BLM and protesters including Bundy’s supporters, some of whom were reportedly armed.

“My Clark County sheriff, Doug Gillespie, didn’t finish his job,” Bundy said. “What the mandate from we the people was, Saturday was to disarm the park service and BLM. And when he didn’t do that, and his time was up, then we the people took it into our hands and had to do the sheriff’s job and the governor of Nevada’s job.”

Bundy said his supporters marched “and they faced an army of bureaucrats, and they faced those guns with courage and faith and much danger, and they backed those bureaucrats down and they run out of this county into Utah.”

Beck pushed on Bundy as to whether his armed supporters justified the response from the feds, but also questioned whether something more was at play than grazing fees.

“All I know is … I feel like it’s evidently time to disarm this bureaucracy,” Bundy said. “They’re overpowering us with guns, and this is a prime example. They’re ruling with unlimited power over we the people, and we the people, we can’t stand it no longer. We’ve got to do something. So this seems to be sort of a mandate for we the people.”

Bundy did not go into specifics about how sheriffs or people should “disarm” federal regulators, but he said he disputes that the land in question is federal land. He claims the land belongs to the state of Nevada.

He said it is up to county sheriffs to enforce the people’s constitutional rights in cases like his.